Elgg Social Networking

Create and manage your own social network site using this free open-source tool

$12.60

$34.99

RRP $20.99

RRP $34.99

eBook

Print + eBook

Want this title & more?

$16.99 p/month

Subscribe to PacktLib

Enjoy full and instant access to over 2000 books and videos – you’ll find everything you need to stay ahead of the curve and make sure you can always get the job done.

Book Details

ISBN 139781847192806

Paperback196 pages

About This Book

Create your own customized community site

Manage users, invite friends, start groups and blogs

Host content: photos, videos, MP3s, podcasts

Manage your Elgg site, protect it from spam

Written on Elgg version 0.9

Who This Book Is For

This book is aimed at people interested in social networking and e-learning teachers.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Social Networks and Elgg

Types of Social Networks

H﻿ow Can a Social Network Help You?

Tools of the Trade

What's so Special About Elgg?

So, What can Elgg Do?

Summary

Chapter 2: A Tour around Elgg

Playing With Elgg-Powered Networks

Sign Up

Account Settings

Your Profile

Customize Your Account

Define Access Privileges

Your Blo﻿g

Manage Your Files

Find People

Make Friends

Your Community

Your Messages

Your Resources

Your Presentation

Recent Activity

Summary

Chapter 3: Users, Profiles, and Connections

Connecting to Friends and Users

Build a Profile

Making Friends with Internal Members

Attracting Visitors

Administration Options

Playing Boss

Limiti﻿ng Users on the Site

Sharin﻿g Admin Rights

The Scope of an Elgg Administrator

Summary

Chapter 4: Blogging and Resources

Handling Files

Start Blogging

Saving Drafts

Handling Improper Content

Preventing Spam

Downloading Blogs

Managing Resources

Podcasting with Elgg

Summary

Chapter 5: Communities and Files

Creating Communities

Grooming the Community

Joining the Community

Using the Community

Other Community Administration

Community Forum

Handling Files

Send Messages

Sharing Bookmarks

Using Files

Summary

Chapter 6: Customizing Elgg

Why Customize?

What Makes Up a Theme?

Controlling Themes

The Default Template

What are <div> and <span>?

The pageshell

The﻿ frontpage Files

Con﻿tent Keywords

Hints for Designing a Custom Template

Adding Public Templates

Changing Templates

Creating Themes Based on Templates

Replacing the Default Template

Contributing Themes

Summary

Chapter 7: Elgg Plug-Ins

General Structures of Plug-Ins

Things to Remember While Installing Plug-Ins

The Plug-Ins

How to Remove Plug-Ins

Upgr﻿ading Plug-Ins

Summary

What You Will Learn

Get started with your Social networking site

Customize your site's appearance to give it a unique style

Invite friends, create groups, and start blogs

Automate your user registration

Host photos, videos, and MP3sâ€”enable users to comment and discuss them

Use Elgg as a group podcasting platform

Create, improve, and maintain a community

Protect your network from spam

In Detail

Elgg is an open-source social web application licensed under GPL version 2, and runs on the LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP) or WAMP (Windows, Apache, MySQL, PHP) platform. It offers a networking platform combining elements of blogging, e-portfolios, news feed aggregation, file sharing, and social networking. Elgg has its own plug-in architecture, and can use plug-ins to provide a calendar and a wiki. It supports a number of open standards including RSS, LDAP for authentication, FOAF, and XML-RPC for integration with most third-party blogging clients. It can be integrated with MediaWiki, Moodle, Drupal, and WebCT.

Elgg provides each user with a personal weblog, file repository (with podcasting capabilities), an online profile, and an RSS reader. Additionally, all of a user's content can be tagged with keywordsâ€”so they can connect with other users with similar interests and create their own personal learning network. However, where Elgg differs from a regular weblog or a commercial social network (such as MySpace) is the degree of control each user is given over who can access their content. Each profile item, blog post, or uploaded file can be assigned its own access restrictionsâ€”from fully public to readable only by a particular group or individual.

Using Elgg is the easiest way to create your own fully customized, hosted social network for your business, organization, or group of friends. Elgg communities can include blogs, discussion groups, media galleries, friends' lists, and much more. Because it's open source, and has many plug-ins, Elgg can be extended in unlimited ways. Elgg lets you host your own Facebook-style social network and retain complete control over how it works. This book shows you all you need to know to create safe, fun social networks.

While anybody can use Elgg to create their social network, it is especially useful in education as it has many features making it suitable for e-learning, including groups, communities, and blogs that can be used for online classes where students can communicate in a new way with each other and with students around the worldâ€”in a managed, protected environment, creating what its authors term a "personal learning landscape". This book also covers using Elgg in teaching/learning.

Authors

Mayank Sharma

Mayank Sharma is a contributing editor at SourceForge, Inc's Linux.com. He also writes a monthly column for Packt Publishing.

Alerts & Offers

Series & Level

We understand your time is important. Uniquely amongst the major publishers, we seek to develop and publish the broadest range of learning and information products on each technology. Every Packt product delivers a specific learning pathway, broadly defined by the Series type. This structured approach enables you to select the pathway which best suits your knowledge level, learning style and task objectives.

Learning

As a new user, these step-by-step tutorial guides will give you all the practical skills necessary to become competent and efficient.

Beginner's Guide

Friendly, informal tutorials that provide a practical introduction using examples, activities, and challenges.

Essentials

Fast paced, concentrated introductions showing the quickest way to put the tool to work in the real world.

Cookbook

A collection of practical self-contained recipes that all users of the technology will find useful for building more powerful and reliable systems.

Blueprints

Guides you through the most common types of project you'll encounter, giving you end-to-end guidance on how to build your specific solution quickly and reliably.

Mastering

Take your skills to the next level with advanced tutorials that will give you confidence to master the tool's most powerful features.

Starting

Accessible to readers adopting the topic, these titles get you into the tool or technology so that you can become an effective user.

Progressing

Building on core skills you already have, these titles share solutions and expertise so you become a highly productive power user.